This fourth disc takes the idea of «completeness»
to a whole new level — only the first two out of sixteen (!) tracks here are
actually by Patton, the rest of them divided between blues guitarist Willie
Brown; the legendary Son House; and a gifted, but completely unknown singer and
pianist by the name of Louise Johnson. Allegedly,
Patton may be sitting in on second guitar on a couple of the Son House tunes,
and apparently, he also contributes
some «response vocals» on several of Johnson's tracks, but mostly his presence
on all this stuff is in spirit — he just happened to be sharing the recording
studio with all these guys on one or more sunny (or not so sunny) days in June
1930, in the same old studio in Grafton, Wisconsin. (For the record, many of
these tracks — but not including Patton's — were previously released on an
obscure LP called Legendary Sessions
Delta Style: The Famous 1930 Paramount Recordings In Chronological Order,
at least one European pressing of which is said to date back to 1973.)

Which means that there is not that much to
review here: Son House is awesome, but he should be talked about on his own
page in his own time — although we might use this as a pretext to men­tion
that, despite all the obvious similarities, Son House's playing and singing
style, being the direct predecessor
to and major influence on Muddy Waters, is much closer to the familiar Chicago
patterns than Patton's playing or singing, and gives the impression of being
more con­cerned about «tightness» and «showmanship» at the same time. Louise
Johnson is a rare example of a lady singing and «tinkling the ivories» all at
once, and she is fairly powerful at the piano, and it is fun to discover ʻOn The
Wallʼ, a newly lyricized version of Charles Davenport's ʻCow Cow Bluesʼ, one of
the earliest examples of New Orleanian blues boogie that would later go on to
become Ahmet Ertegün's and Ray Charles' ʻMess Aroundʼ. But there's just not
enough material by her, really, to get to know her real proper. And Willie
Brown? He's just another attempt at a Blind Willie Johnson clone (vocal-wise,
at least) that probably went for a dime a dozen back in 1929-30 — sorry,
Willie.

Which leaves us with the two Patton songs, one
of which (ʻSome Summer Dayʼ) is just a cover of ʻSittin' On Top Of The Worldʼ,
following on the heels of the success of the Mississipi Sheiks' original
version; and the second one, ʻBird Nest Boundʼ, with Brown on guitar, is just a
run-of-the-mill example of the man's singing, with nothing particularly
exciting about it.

Curious, too, because the backstory goes that
Paramount were actually after Patton in 1930, and that he'd arrived in Grafton
from Lula, Mississippi, with Brown, Louise Johnson, and Son House in tow — he'd
just befriended House at the time and put him under his patronage, as the
latter was an unknown nobody at the time; yet somehow, in the end, Paramount
ended up recording his retinue instead of the Big Man himself. (Furthermore,
none of the commercially released Son House records managed to sell well at the
time, and the man did not record commercially again for several decades after
that!). One can only guess why Charley was not in the mood to cut a significant
number of sides that summer. Regardless, taken together, the whole thing is
still a classy many-faced document of the times — and, besides, sometimes the
«tell me who's your friend» principle goes a long way towards a better understanding
of the artist himself.